Víti translates as Hell – and oddly enough, there is more than one volcanic crater with this name, in Iceland… One cannot help but be sucked in to this Olde Norse culture. By the thundering gods!! and all that…

The crater lake of Viti (Hell)

You can see how grim it was, up in the clouds, but we made the trip around and down into this explosion crater; not quite into the bowels of the Earth, but it did feel strangely warmer…

Firstly, a walk around the edge of the largest of the lakes

A smaller crater lake looks like a Tropical Island in reverse… No sharks here to worry you!

Mud-pots and brimstone – are we in Hell yet?

Feeling rather tropical and steamy down here…

Climbing out of Hell

Hell is actually quite colourful, really

Inside the crater walls

Misty views into the crater lake

Curiously, at the end of the Road to Hell – there’s somewhere to leave your car.

Hell hath… a car park??

Of course, there’s more to this region than just the Viti explosion crater. This being a geothermal area and a highly active one at that, means that man wanted some of that power.

And thus, a power station was born.

Krafla Geothermal Power Station

There are pipes criss-crossing the landscape, linking all the boreholes with the main power station. In fact, in a couple of the photographs of Viti above, you will see long silver pipes lurking in the background. The boreholes are drilled to various depths, bearing in mind that there is a hot, molten magma chamber sitting somewhere between 3-8 km below ground. What the boreholes essentially do, is release the hot, steamy vapours generated by this lava pot. This steam then passes through turbines, which in turn powers magnetised rotors that are surrounded with a coil of copper (blah, blah, blah), and tah-da! electricity is generated.

One of the boreholes at Krafla

Once all the steam has done its business and condensed into super-hot water – it has to go somewhere. In a similar way that the Reykjanes Power Plant feeds the Blue Lagoon (a post coming your way soon!!), the Krafla plant feeds the Myvatn baths. But before it gets there we see more strange sightings on the road away from hell…

I used to live in Cayman Islands and there is one area called – Hell. There is even a little store where you can buy all sorts of trinkets on Hell, Cayman Islands. The man that owns the shop dresses up as the devil and he was born in 6/6/66. This is no joke! He’s proud to show his birth certificate and driving permit. Rather strange if you ask me! 😉

eeeuuuww! I hope they weren’t actually using it??!!
Yes, that noise was incredible. I’d actually forgotten about that – thanks for reminding me! It added to the spookiness of the cloudy surroundings, it might not have been quite so surreal hearing it if it had been a sunnier day!

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Rarely spotted without one camera or another in my hand, I'll jump at any chance to get out and explore. Whilst natural settings are my ideal getaway, the odd city-break doesn't go amiss. The suitcase is on stand-by and the passport is always handy.